Pages

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Have you heard of SchoolhouseTeachers.com? Well, if you haven’t and you’re a
homeschooling family, go there NOW!
There is so much content, I honestly believe you could homeschool your
child completely from this site. That is
not an exaggeration. Here is the list of
subjects with daily lesson plans offered:

The Schoolhouse Dailies section of the site offers
even more content. These currently
include Ditch the Desk-Hands On Activities, Summer Olympics, Summer
Shakespeare, Daily Math, Daily Grammar, Daily Writing, Everyday Easels,
Everyday Explorers, and more!

I TOLD you
there was a ton of stuff here to explore!

Every time I log on, I find new content, and that excites me
as I head into a new school year! I will tell you that one of my favorite parts of the site is
the Daily Extras—Ditch the Desk feature.
Here’s an example of what Abbey and I did one day, based on a lesson
plan from this section of the site.

We baked a batch of brownies together, let them cool and
then did the following activities with them:

·Cut 1/3 of the pan into 1-inch squares.

·Estimated how many 1-inch squares we could get
out of the entire pan.

·Learned how to figure perimeter and area of the
cut area, and then of the entire pan.

·Re-read The Three Little Pigs in preparation for
the next steps of the differences in building a house.

Read in Matthew 24 about the importance of building your spiritual house on the Rock.

Took the cut squares, ready-made frosting, and
spaghetti noodles and allowed her to use her engineering skills to build the
most-sturdy house she could.

·It got terribly messy, but man, did she have
fun! She had no idea how much math we snuck in that day!

But wait---there’s more!
At the risk of sounding like an infomercial, becoming a full member of
SchoolhouseTeachers.com allows you have three, different, FREE Schoolhouse Planners, access to Schoolhouse
Library with summer reading lists, teacher lesson archives, and more! Here’s
some of the newest additions: http://schoolhouseteachers.com/site-tour/whats-new/.

Want to take a look risk free? Check out the sample pages. Like what
you see? You can join now for only $1 for the first month. Keep your membership going for only $5.95 a
month and cancel at any time! Where else can you find this much content for
that price?

If it’s out there, I have yet to find it.

Find out what other bloggers have to say about SchoolhouseTeachers.com here.

**I was offered a full-year membership to SchoolhouseTeachers.com in exchange for this review. No other compensation was given.

Monday, July 23, 2012

This is my very first review for the Schoolhouse Review Crew Team. I am so excited to be a part of this amazing team of bloggers!

My first review features a great math program called Mastering Essential Math Skills. It is a program
written by Richard W. Fisher, who has over twenty years of teaching experience. He designed these books to help students
become algebra-ready in less than one year.

I received two books:
Mastering Essential Math Skills: Book One for Grades 4 -5 plus the accompanying DVD and Mastering Essential Math Skills: Geometry. They are recommended for grades 4 -5 but, in my opinion, could be used for advanced 3rd graders or struggling 6th graders as well.

Here’s my first impression: The workbooks are not fancy. They are straightforward with no pretty
pictures dressing up each page. I
thought this would be a negative for my lover-of-pink-things nine-year-old daughter, but she was fine
with it! She was focused on the problems and didn’t seem to notice what wasn’t
there.

Each worksheet has a review section, two speed-drills wheels,
the new concept practice section and one word problem. Notice there are only 10 problems in the new
material section on each page. Fisher
believes that the student does not need more problems than that if they know
the new material. He believes, instead,
that the student should move on to a new concept once they have mastered each
level.

The speed drills wheel is meant for you, the teacher, to
insert a function sign and number in the middle of the circle. For example, if you insert "+2" in the middle of
the circle, your student is to add two to each number in the circle and put the
answer in the space provided. This
should be a timed drill for warm-up. I really
like this, as it offers some great mental math practice.

He then suggests that your students work on the review
section and then watch the DVD for the new material, or if you choose not to
purchase the DVD, you can then teach the new concept at this point.

Fisher is a no fluff, get-straight-to-the-point kind of
teacher. The DVD includes an
introductory teaching session by Fisher himself for each new concept. Each lesson has him briefly talking directly
to the students, “Be sure to have your notebook and two pencils ready to go.
Always come to class prepared.” The
screen flips to a whiteboard, where your student will see only the problem
itself being worked out. They are to
copy along with him as he writes on the whiteboard.

After a very quick, five-minute lesson, he tells them to
work the problems in the book, remembering “the right side is the right way”,
meaning always work from the right side of the problem to the left for an
accurate answer. He then ends his
lesson, your student pauses the DVD, and gets to work in the workbook itself.

My daughter is nine years old, a rising fourth grader, and
not a lover of math. When I told her we
were going to be doing this new math program, she was less than happy. For her first lesson, I had her get a
notebook and pencil and sit in from on the computer and follow along to his
lecture. Fisher moves through each
session very quickly, and Abbey had a hard time copying the problems down as
fast as he did. To avoid the
frustration, I allowed her to pause the DVD and continue once she had caught
up. By the third lesson, she no longer
had to pause the DVD, as she had learned to copy faster and keep up with
him. She had adapted and overcome, and
was really quite proud of herself. I saw
her self-esteem improve in just a short time.

While this program calls for twenty minutes a day, I was
unsure if that meant my daughter should be through with her lesson in twenty
minutes, or that I should only allow her to work for twenty minutes on the new
concept. Because I didn’t want her
getting too frustrated, I chose the latter.
While she would be very close to finishing each day after that time,
there was only one day that she was able to completely finish the
worksheet. That being said, in just one week’s time I saw
her computation speed increase tremendously.Repetition and review, along with the new concepts building upon one
another, made her stay sharp and improve.

One of the best features of the book for my daughter was the
fact that the solutions to all of the new concept problems were in the back of the book. This created a self-correcting system for
her. She would work her problems and
then quickly look in the back of the book to see if she got them right or
wrong. She absolutely loved this aspect of the program!

Book One: Grades 4 -5 covers the following concepts:

Whole numbers

Fractions

Decimals

Percentages

Integers

Geometry

Charts and graphs

Problem solving

Ratio and proportions

Probability and statistics

Number theory and algebra

Graphing on number lines and coordinate systems.

The subtitle to Math Essentials is “20 minutes a day to
success.” I love Richard Fisher’s
teaching system and I would recommend this math program to anyone looking for a
straightforward math curriculum that rapidly builds upon each mastered
concept.

~~~~

Mastering Essential Math Skills for Grades 4 -5 can be
ordered here for $15.95 for the
workbook only; $33.95 for the workbook plus the instructional DVD. Mastering Essential Math Skills Geometry is available for $11.95 per workbook.

~~~~

· To see what other Schoolhouse Crew Review Members thought of this same product, click here.

***Disclosure: I received this product free of charge in exchange for writing and posting this review.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

It wasn’t always that way.
Goodness knows, it wasn’t. Our journey has been a crazy, beautiful, dramatic, heart-wrenching ride. My
firstborn child, Hannah Beth became my entire life when she was born to me in a small Army hospital in Germany
some 22 years ago.

I often tell the story of when we took her to her three-month,
well-baby checkup and the doctor was concerned that she wasn’t lifting her head
well when he lay her on her tummy.
Looking concerned, he asked me, “Do you put her down on her tummy and
let her play a lot?” Dumbfounded, I
said, “You mean you’re supposed to put them down???” I was a new mama, alone in a foreign country,
with no one but her daddy to tell me how to parent, and he was as clueless as
me. I just held her everywhere I went and for
every household chore I did. Needless to
say, I forced myself to put her down more after that and she turned out just
fine.

She was five years old when her daddy and I divorced. She took it very hard. One day, not long after we had divorced,
Hannah came into the kitchen where I was cooking, dragging her bulging suitcase
behind her. When I asked her where she
was going, she broke down sobbing, saying, “I’m going to live with Daddy. I
miss him so much.” I knelt down and held her and we cried together. All these years
later, it absolutely breaks my heart to think about
that moment.

Not too long ago, when
packing up some of her things to take to her new house, I found an old diary of
hers. She was fifteen years old, some ten years after the divorce, when she
had made this entry: “Of all the things I wish for, I wish for Mama and Daddy to
be married again.”

What an awful, painful toll
divorce takes on our children, no matter what their age.

That divorce affected many things, not the least of which were her teenage
years here with me and her stepdad.
Always having a way out, another parent to run to, made disciplining her
a tough assignment for us. It didn’t
stop us from trying, and it didn’t stop her from resisting. Affection from her was non-existent. Never a cuddle-bug to begin with, she pulled
away even more. We use to tease her: 'If
you wanted a hug from Hannah, she had to pencil you into her planner.'

I spent countless nights crying myself to sleep
over Hannah and the ways I felt like I had failed her. I thought if my own flesh and blood could
spew such hatred from her lips at me, that surely I had failed. My faith was all that kept me going. I knew God had her in His grip and that she,
too, was leaning on Him even when she wasn’t leaning on me. And even through the tough stuff, she would often confide in me about the serious issues in her life, and that gave
me some hope that one day things would be okay.

After graduating from high school, she made a few really dumb
decisions (don’t we all at age 18?) and took some wrong turns. At that point, though, I had stopped
preaching at her about every little thing and I had decided that enough rope to hang her
herself may be what she needed in order to learn the hard lessons. I refused to be the devil’s advocate and
berate her for her choices, as my own mother had done to me, so I just listened
a lot and prayed even harder. I never stopped
loving her and I know she knew that.
When she finally hit rock bottom and realized she needed to change, she called for help and Michael and I immediately
responded. We met her where she was and wrapped our love around her.

That was a turning point in our relationship.

Gradually she began to speak to me with a different level of respect, with a different
tone in her voice, and with a contrite heart. A
couple of years later, she met a wonderful man and they started a beautiful
family together. As she continued to mature, she started commenting
on her younger brother’s disrespect for me. She started telling him to stop
resisting the boundaries at our house and to just accept them as what was
best. I had heard rumors that one day your
children may admit that you were right about your parenting, and it happened!
It really happened!!

And, oh my goodness, you should see how much she loves that
little baby boy of hers! No scheduling
of affection needed for him. She
liberally showers him with hugs and kisses and takes joy in everything he does! It is so awesome to watch. She is making sure that he knows who his Savior
is and I know she will raise him in the church and make sure he has a personal relationship
with Jesus Christ. As someone who never
thought I would even live long enough to see my grandchildren, I really cannot
adequately express how happy that makes me.

I love being friends with Hannah. She is truly one of the
best listeners I know. She never acts
like she is thinking of her response before I finish talking. She is listening.
And that makes a beautiful friend and that makes a friend beautiful.

In my own life, I know God the Father anguished over my rebellion, too. As I started a downward cycle of sin, I ran as far away from him as I could, thinking I knew
what was best. Leaving the church,
resisting His word, drowning out His voice and pushing away His love—I just
wanted to make my own choices and desires and forget about others. I was numb and lost.

Running straight
through His boundaries for me, I hit
rock bottom. But like the good Father He is, He met me right in
the middle of my ugly mess and brought me out of that deep, miry clay and wrapped His love around me. It
took me a little while to fully understand the depth of mercy He bestowed on me, or to recognize all that He truly saved me
from, but I learned to know (that I know that I know that I know) His ways were
lovely and His truth set me free.

Oh, and by the way, He and I became pretty good friends
along the way, too.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Did ever saint find this Friend
forsake him?
No, not one! no, not one!
Or sinner find that He would not take him?
No, not one! no, not one!”
[There’s Not a Friend Like the Lowly Jesus]